The Periodic Table and Sam Kean

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean is a great book with lots of interesting stories about the elements such as:

• Superfluid helium that defies gravity
• Antimony pentafluoride - an acid with a pH of -31 (100,000 billion billion billion times stronger than HCl)
• The cobalt-60 dirty bomb that thankfully hasn't ever been built (as far as we know)
• How Linus Pauling figured out how chemistry works. Really.
• Cadmium-tainted rice in Japan
• Prontosil - the antibiotic that predates penicillin
• Acute beryllium disease
• How cigarettes can also kill you with radioactive polonium
• Why the Washington Monument is topped with a pyramid of aluminum
• Why lithium works as an antidepressant
• How Wilhelm Rontgen went out of his way to prove to himself that he really didn't discover x-rays. Even though he did.
• Ice X
• How drinking beer lead to the development of the modern particle collider
• "Tools of Ridiculous Precision

And much more! Read it! You can go here to preview most of the first chapter for free (click on the book cover)!

Periodic Trends

Go here for a very simple interactive diagram that describes trends in the periodic table with regards to atomic radius, ionization energy, electron affinity, and metallic character.

Atomic Orbitals Animations

If you're having a little trouble visualizing atomic orbitals, this might help. It's a 3D diagram of all of the orbitals that you can manipulate. Check it out here.

Chemistry + Biology = Nobel Prize

In case you missed it, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded last week to two American scientists, Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka for their work on how cell signalling molecules work. Check out the summary of the Prize here.